The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“SOLID FARM POLICY” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the Senate section on pages S6730-S6733 on June 19, 1998.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
SOLID FARM POLICY
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I had not intended to come to the floor to make a few comments today until I read a story about a press conference that was held in the Senate here yesterday by some Senators about farm policy. A group of Senators held a press conference on farm policy of this country and said, ``We've got a good, solid farm policy. The problem is not the farm bill. The problem is the farm bill is not being implemented properly.''
We have a good, solid farm policy? Are they kidding? What planet are they living on if they think we have a good, solid farm policy? What we have is a new farm policy written by people who don't know much about farming and it is called the Agricultural Market Transition Act, and what it is transitioning is family farmers straight out of business.
Farm families are going broke in our State in record numbers. In fact, there are more auction sales of family farmers this year than ever before, and they have had so many auction sales of family farmers in North Dakota that they have had to call auctioneers out of retirement to handle the sales.
There is a lot more than statistics about losing these farmers. Farmers plant a seed in the spring and then hope it will grow. They hope it doesn't hail and insects don't come and the crop doesn't get diseased. And if it does come above the ground and then eventually if they escape all those weather disasters, they harvest in the fall and they hope maybe they will get a decent price for their crop.
These families struggle hard, they work hard and they risk everything they have. Guess what? This current farm policy is a mess. We have prices that are in the tank for grain, and family farmers out there, who are raising grain and trying to take it to the market these days, discover that they have lost their shirts. And then we have people saying that we have a good, solid farm policy.
I had a farm meeting in North Dakota and a fellow stood up. He was a big rugged fellow, kind of a husky build. He had kind of a black beard. He stood up and he started speaking. He said, ``My granddad farmed, my dad farmed, and I farmed for 23 years.'' Then he got tears in his eyes and his chin began to quiver, and he said, ``The problem is, I can't continue anymore.'' That is more than just losing a business. That is losing their life's dream. And, now, we have people who say we have a good, solid farm policy.
I didn't vote for this previous farm bill that was passed a couple of years ago. There were people involved in writing that who wouldn't know a dairy cow from a Dairy Queen. The fact is, they don't know much about farming. I would counsel them, if they think it is a good farm policy: Go buy yourself a farm. Go buy yourself a farm, take your suit off and gas up the tractor and plant a crop. Then risk your money and hope all summer you are able to harvest, and when you do, then truck it to the elevator and sell it for $3 a bushel after you put $5 a bushel into raising it.
Then add up your bank balance, and then ask yourself if you think it is good farm policy? Ask yourself, after you have lost your shirt and lost your suit and lost your savings, ask yourself whether you think it is a good farm policy.
Of course it is not a good farm policy. The fact is, the little guy is going broke; the big guys are getting rich. I am talking about the folks who take the product off the farm and they haul it and they process it. They take that grain and they puff it and they crisp it, they do everything with it. The miller and grocery manufacturers and everybody else are all making money. But it is the person out there who is trying to run a family farm who is not doing well.
I find it interesting, the people who do not seem to care much about that are the same people around here who bellow every day about being profamily. Nobody in politics in this town is profamily if they are not willing to stand up and be profamily farmer, in my judgment.
Let me show a chart that demonstrates part of the problem in my State, the State of North Dakota. This area here, the red area, means that these folks have had a disaster declaration every single year for 5 years in a row, weather related. One third of our counties, you can't do much about that. That is not a family farm's fault. These are weather-related disasters, 5 years in a row, every year. The orange one-half our counties is 4 out of 5; the yellow two-thirds of our counties have had disasters 3 out of 5 years.
In addition to having the weather problem--here is what has happened to the price of wheat. It has fallen like an elevator, straight down. The price of wheat was up here when the Freedom to Farm bill or the Market Transition Act was passed. Here is the price of wheat now at a five-year low.
Here is what happened to net income to North Dakota farmers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor statistics. North Dakota's net farm income dropped 98 percent for family farmers. That is 98 percent. They virtually lost all of their income. What has happened to those family farmers out there struggling with grain prices that are terrible, and with weather problems?
The price of a tractor goes up, as you can see. The price of a combine goes up. The price of fertilizer goes up. The price of diesel fuel goes up. So their income goes down, way down, and all the prices they pay for their input go up.
Then what has happened to the folks who take that grain and do something with it? Bread profits, the price of a bushel of wheat goes from $5.50 to $3. Do you think you see lower bread prices in the grocery store? You don't. What happens is the profits for the folks who are making bread go right here.
These folks who constructed the farm policy that we have in this country today called this ``Market Transition Act''; that is, transitioning family farmers right off the family farm. They said, ``We don't need a price support anymore for family farmers. Let them take their own risks, and if the market price for grain is dropping, too bad. Tough luck.'' So they set up a circumstance where you end up having no deficiency payments. They put, instead, a declining payment, which at the end of 7 years phases out and goes to zero.
It is interesting, at the press conference yesterday that was held by some Senators, they said the problem is we cannot retreat. The rest of the world is not going to retreat. The fact is, in much of the rest of the world they understand family farmers are important and they have policies that try to support and help family farmers and keep them on the farm. It is this country that has decided, as a matter of policy by the majority party in this Congress, that family farmers really don't matter very much. Oh, giant agrifactories will farm the land from California to Maine, I suppose. They don't seem to care who farms the land, because they think family farmers don't matter.
They say, ``We can fix all this. First of all, the policy is sound, and we can fix it. We will fix it with fast track, fast track trade authority.''
Gosh, there is a new idea. Fast track trade authority. We send an American trade negotiator up to Canada to negotiate with Canada; send him to Mexico to negotiate with Mexico; send him to Geneva to negotiate GATT. We had an $11 billion trade deficit with Canada and we negotiated with them and it went from an $11 billion deficit to a $23 billion deficit. Does anybody think that is going to help family farmers? And, incidentally, the trade deficit with Canada is exacerbated by a flood of Canadian grain coming to our border, undercutting our grain. It is unfairly subsidized. Nobody seems to be willing to do much about it.
We have a $2 billion surplus with Mexico, negotiate a treaty, and the surplus goes to a huge deficit, $15 billion deficit. It doesn't look like that is progress to me.
Do you want to see how the Mexican trade agreement works? Look at it through the eye of a potato. Try to take a potato across the Mexican border, a raw potato. You can't do that very easily, but you can see french fries coming north. Or how about a bean? How about a bean going across the Mexican border? Do you think we can export unlimited quantities of beans? I am sorry, no, our negotiator said no, we don't care much about beans.
What about beer? Do you like Mexican beer? You can buy plenty of it in the United States. You like American beer, in Mexico? I am sorry, you will have great trouble finding it because our negotiators, in my judgment, did an incompetent job in negotiating the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico.
And, yes, GATT. When I say the GATT agreement, do you know a ship pulled up at a dock in Stockton, CA, a few weeks ago loaded with European barley. This was feed barley, which in fact is not worth very much, probably a couple of dollars a bushel or less--subsidized by
$1.10 a bushel by the Europeans, shipped into this country where we already have a surplus of barley, and guess what, it was legal. It was legal under GATT. You can do that under the trade agreement our negotiators negotiated, you can ship in barley with a subsidy that is almost 50 percent of the market price of the product. Who are these people kidding?
Do we want to send negotiators out to negotiate more of these agreements, and they are going to help our country? I don't think so.
The fact is, the people who held a press conference yesterday and said this farm policy works just fine don't have the foggiest idea of what is going on on the family farm. They say, ``Well, let's go to fast track and have more of this trade.'' All that has done is set you back. I am for opening foreign markets and forcing opportunities to market more of our grain overseas, but that is not what is happening with our trade agreements.
I find it interesting. They said one of the ways that will solve this farm problem is farmers' savings accounts. Oh, yeah? Where are the farmers going to get the savings? If you are able to raise wheat and lose $2 a bushel for selling it, you are going to get a lot of savings, so we are going to produce farmers' savings accounts.
Maybe the people who held the press conference will be able to tell farmers where they are going to get savings, when the price for wheat is in the tank, and when they pulled the rug out from under family farmers saying they don't need a safety net. They said, in effect, we don't care if there are family farmers left in this country.
What we need to do, Mr. President, is to reestablish a safety net and recognize that this transition program doesn't make any sense. Yes, farmers ought to have all the planning flexibility in the world. This Congress ought to decide that family farmers matter, and we ought to do as Europe and others do and decide there ought to be some basic support mechanism for family farming. We have a minimum wage for lower-income working folks, but we say to the family out there on the farm, ``You're on your own. Oh, you can try and market your beef to big packing plants''--where four of them control almost 85 percent of the beef packing and they have a fist around the neck of the bottle. They say to the farmer and rancher, ``You go ahead and market up in that direction and the big packing plants are going to tell you what you're going to get, and if you don't like what you get, tough luck; you're out of business.''
Or people raising wheat or barley, we say, ``You can market with the grain companies. They have an iron fist around the neck of the bottle where you are going to market, and if you don't like the price, tough luck; you're out of business.''
The fact is, when we get an industry or a big special interest in this country that has a headache, you have a dozen people in the Senate rushing to see if they can't pat their pillow and give them aspirin and help them take a nap.
The big interests in this country have plenty of friends around here. It's just the little guy who is left in the dust. You have family farmers who don't have a lot of money. They don't have a lot of clout. They are not like the tobacco industry. They are not able to spend $50 million or $100 million worth of advertising on their issue. The tobacco industry this week was able to turn back this tobacco bill because they were able to advertise all across this country.
What about the issue of stopping teen smoking. Well, the tobacco industry won; kids lost. The tobacco industry had money, kids didn't. If you're a big interest, you have big money, and you can find plenty of folks to care about your interest in the Congress.
The question is, Will there be enough people caring about the interests of family farmers in the coming weeks to decide we are going to intervene and try to save a network of family farms in this country? We ought to resurrect the safety net. There ought to be at least some sort of marketing loan that gives farmers a decent price if they don't get it from the marketplace. I much sooner they get it from the marketplace, but if it is not there, farmers need some help. They ought to get some indemnity payments for the crop diseases that have been pervasive in my State and other States. The crop disease is called scab. We ought to have a Crop Insurance Program that works, and if it doesn't work, let's make it work.
We ought to have something in place that starts to do something about market concentration. Yes, let's look into the livestock industry, the railroads, the big packing plants, and in all the areas where concentration exists. All that concentration squeezes down on family farmers and takes potential profits away from family farmers.
Finally, those who talk about trade, it seems to me ought to spend their time not talking about going to some sort of fast track where the record has been a disaster for this country and for our producers and, yes, especially for our farmers. They ought to talk about sanctions.
We don't like Cuba, so we say we are going to have sanctions against Cuba. We don't like Libya, so we have sanctions against Libya. We don't like Iraq, so we're going to have sanctions against Iraq. We don't like Iran, so we're going to have sanctions against Iran. India and Pakistan detonate nuclear devices, so we're going to have sanctions against those countries.
Ten percent of the markets in the world are off limits to farmers. These sanctions have something to do with national security decisions. The defense authorization bill deals with national security. It seems to me if you are taking markets away from family farmers, you ought to pay them for it. Why should family farmers lose markets and be told,
``Well, you're going to contribute now to our national security interest because we are taking this market away from you; yes, your price is going to go down, and, yes, you are going to lose money. Be a good American; you accept the cost.''
In virtually every other area in this country, we do something about that. If it were big business, we would come in with a big policy to reimburse them. You don't think when the big exporters lose money that they are not reimbursed? It is interesting to me that virtually every time something happens that causes a substantial disruption in part of our economy, somebody is here saying we ought to do something about it, but there is not much discussion about family farmers, and I really regret that.
I know some people say, ``Well, this country is New York and Los Angeles and a few big airports in between, and what you fly over and look out at is just rural territory.'' Food doesn't come from a plastic bottle; food doesn't come from a package. It comes, in most cases, from the land, and the rural people in this country. These are people who come from my home area in Hettinger County, ND, who decided long ago they love the land and they want to live on the land. They want to raise their children on the land, and they have 500, 800, or 1,000 acres. They have risked everything they have and everything they own to try to make a living. Yet, we come along with this farm policy that says we are different from Europe, from Japan or other countries. We have a policy that doesn't care whether family farmers continue to exist. Our policy says if the marketplace gives them a decent price, fine; if it doesn't, tough luck, because we believe in the free market.
There is no free market in agriculture. What an absurd contention. There has never been a free market in agriculture and will not be a free market. Our farmers are asked to compete not just against European farmers, they are asked to compete against European farmers and the European Governments. Our farmers are asked to sell in circumstances where our trade negotiators negotiate agreements and you can't get enough T-bone steak into Tokyo.
Did you know that T-bone steaks are roughly $30 a pound into Tokyo? Do you know why? Because we can't get enough beef into Japan. Why can't we? Because their market is closed. We are getting more than we used to.
We have a $50 to $60 billion trade deficit with Japan, but we still don't get enough beef into Japan. We don't get enough wheat into China. I can stand here all day and talk about the problems we impose on family farmers to interrupt their markets because of incompetent trade negotiators and unenforced trade agreements. We negotiate an agreement and we forget about it in a month. They were bad agreements to start with, and they are rarely enforced, if at all. I am just saying that the economic all-stars in this country are its family farmers. If this Congress doesn't decide that broad-based economic ownership matters in this country, then it will have made a very large mistake.
I am standing on this side of the aisle. So that means I am a Democrat. That is how I came to Congress. I ran for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, and I believe in the Jeffersonian strain of the Democratic Party, and its support for broadly-based economic ownership. We believe that the broad-based economic ownership provides the guarantee of economic freedom and, therefore, the guarantee of ultimate political freedoms in this country. I think that is a very, very important issue.
I have come to the floor of the Senate recently talking about concentration in this country. Every day you hear about a new merger, when two huge behemoth American corporations decide to get married. We didn't even know they were dating or having secret discussions. All of a sudden, we discover they have taken out a marriage license. They love each other. What they love is the profits.
Now we have bank after bank, telecommunications companies--you name it--they are all marrying up. The bigger the better. The free market in this country and the market system in this country works only when you have broad-based ownership and robust competition. Concentration means less competition.
Family farmers, individuals all across this country turn on the yard light at night, worship at their local church, and try to send their kids to school, and do a good job, and make a little profit on the farm. All that those family farmers ask is to participate in a market system that works. Almost in every instance they discover that all their input costs are increased by the largest corporations in the land that produce these products. And when they go to market with the products they raise, they discover is worth very, very little. When they try to market it up through an income stream, they find that if they are marketing a cow or a hog, they are marketing through packing plants that are too concentrated to have what is called a ``free market.'' And the same is true with grain.
So, Mr. President, in the coming week or so, you are going to see a lot of activity on this issue. Our family farmers deserve the same kind of interest, in their long-term economic health, as the large special interests get here on the floor of the Senate.
The piece that I referenced at the start, written by Curt Anderson, an Associated Press farm writer, referenced a press conference yesterday. To all of those who attended the press conference yesterday, telling us that we have a good solid farm policy, I say nonsense; this farm policy is a miserable failure. Anybody here who cares about family farmers as I do, and anybody here who cares whether we have family farmers in this country's future ought to be coming to the floor of this Senate and helping us change this farm policy to one that really provides some help to families who are struggling in this country, trying to run their family farms.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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